Search for the Unicorn

An Exhibition in Honor of The Cloisters' 75th Anniversary

May 15, 2013–August 18, 2013

Given by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in time for the opening of The Cloisters in 1938, the Unicorn Tapestries are its best-known masterpieces; yet, seventy-five years later, their history and meaning remain elusive. They have been seen both as complicated metaphors for Christ and as emblems of matrimony, and they are beloved as quaint indications of medieval notions about the natural world. This exhibition of some forty works of art drawn from the collections of the Metropolitan, sister institutions, and private collections invites audiences to see the Unicorn Tapestries anew, as the finest expression of a subject widely treated across cultures, and in both European art and science, from the Middle Ages, through the Renaissance.